In a vain attempt to make this forum more alive, I would suggest we liven the place up and do useful things in the process. We're here to appreciate Yahtzee and his style of criticism, in the overarching sense, so I have a simple suggestion. Let's have discussions about Zero Punctuation (which was also today, in case any of you got caught in a surprise coma) and talk about phrases that particularly caught your attention or word choice that was clever. In the process, we may yet pick up and share better ways to review on our end.

Or don't. I'll just sit here yammering on in this thread either way, but still, the opportunity remains.

Four hours later (With nary a comment yet at a time of writing), I come back from classes to give my input. This week's review was the Sims 4, EA's latest dive back into reasons why people don't like EA.

I found most of this review to be a little dry, to be honest. Not as colorful content as often, though I was giddily following along around the end when he gets into his last big rant. One concept I liked the most enough to make this post, however was the "player first". Long time Yahtzee viewers will know he can occasionally latch onto a type of remark or joke and use it a couple of times throughout the video, Sims 4 being now the most recent example of this. There's actually a good cutaway for our end of the writing spectrum on this (that I call the recurring joke), and I can break it into two sections: Positive and negative.

The positive aspect is the harmless one. See his Just Cause 2 review for how this is done. Basically, it's a witty chance to crack a joke that can be used without inducing a view of the relative good or badness of the story. Since these can be puns (going back to the JC2 review), one can use them for any story you can find a chance to make a recurring joke in, whether you hate it or love it in the review.

Negative, as last paragraph hints at, is the opposite. This Sims 4 review does a pretty good example of how a recurring joke can be negative. While we can't use it to the same extent Yahtzee did (unless the author OK-s attacks against them), we can make an instance of it in the story. Frequent grammatical issue could be hoisted as perhaps the easiest to reach fruits. Idiotic plot devices, poor dialog, the list of things you can go after to make snide remarks about within the story are only limited by how nitpicky you're wiling to go as a reviewer.

So, in conclusion. This week was good. A good start in reflection. Provided all of us have reflections, and are not yet in the process of un-death.

Week two's Destiny review (that anyone could have seen coming) has indeed come. I'm surprised to see Destiny do so well, since it's just a more space-y Borderlands, but that's none of my shitty business. What is my business is that I'm sitting here all along blithering into the darkness (and I do think myself clever for that one, yes).

What I was more interested in was his description of sky boxes as being meaningless as a result of the game not actually letting you go there. He's had gripes about big, beautiful or overdone environments that only serve to look impressive before, but I still think it's handy to observe. For review use, there's a lot to be said about pointless garbage added into story. One of the most typical is the internal aspect of characters. Too many authors think they're being clever by using first-person perspective and trying to forcibly work in thought processes for some effect. It often doesn't contribute and ultimately only establishes two things: This shit is actually very shit, and there isn't a plot twist coming that involves them being robots. The other real hate I have with pointless-in-story-isms is character interactions. I don't mean in general, because I don't know how the fuck you'd write without having interaction. I mean as a side gesture. For instance, let's say our protagonist is forced into a tense situation, escaped by pulling a quick series of lies and misdirection tricks. One thing that utterly ruins a story is to then include whoever was being spoken to having the butt end of their conversation after our protagonist leaves. If they carry on like nothing happened it ruins any tension building as to whether the protagonist is in trouble, and if they linger on it, it's revealed all-too-soon that the jig is up. There's a point where providing less, whether that be pointless art in the background or needless bits of dialog or description, is more.

That just leaves the one aspect; what does a review make of these mistakes? Well, pointing them out can be a joke if phrased creatively enough. That's a bit of a reach, though, especially if it's a major gripe. For these kinds of story errors, it's perhaps better to make a mock-up of said story bit in action. Yahtzee has done this kind of thing before, where he makes up an absurd scenario and implements whatever he's hating at the moment into it for a comedic effect. Really, aside from the lack of audio, there isn't a difference here. The slightly shorter conclusion here is to call bullshit where it lies. Because if you don't, someone else is likely to step in it. We all know the saying; a pile of shit for a pile of shit and the whole world has smelly trousers.

Next review: Hyrule Warriors!

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This is an interesting proposal. I'm considering adding something myself. Until then...

Well, here we are, with D4 (Dark Dreams Don't Die). Session three, and don't you know I'm disappointed it wasn't Hyrule Warriors. I'm hyped out the wazoo I installed in my tits specifically for spewing my hype for that game. Having it torn to shreds would have been a delightful end to a day I wish would have impaled itself upon trying to enter the door and bring us Thursday instead.

Y'see what I did there? That bit had no relevance at all, but it was colorful and hopefully a little entertaining to read. That's my subject for this one, colorful commentary. I was going to do alliteration, but if you need me to tell you about fancy writing concepts like rhyming and repetition of sound I think there's a job opening for you over at Failed English 100 for Twats.

That's not to say those things CAN'T be colorful. The little opening part felt a little more spirited than the end, but that's my retarded opinion. What I really liked was how often Yahtzee kept throwing in little bits for fun. It's a reminder that everything depends on your phrasing, and the importance of your word choice and flow, a bit like Twister night after Thai food. This is perhaps the easiest one to describe how to use, because I already did just that, two sentences ago, when you ignored them like giving them the time of day would be terminal.

That's really the point to all this overdone wordplay, on a more serious note. There's never a time when you can't ham the living shit out of a paragraph, because it all only relies on one thing: Your creativity. There is endless possibility and entertainment in this, so this is possibly one of the most staple tools you can use in reviewing. The only reason I didn't make this my very first writeup is that the D4 review was the only one of the three that had Yahtzee's style of ingesting eight different buckets of paint and a constipation aid, then running pell-mell across creation most pronounced.

That's not to say this trope is infinite, though. Like that last sentence, they can get a bit lengthy if you let them off the hook too long, and while there's nothing wrong with that one (SHUT UP, THERE ISN'T), it's just important to realize there's still REVIEW here. It's enlivened by the colorful parts, not composed of them. Having a review entirely composed of colorful crap would be "interesting", but only in the sense that it may be "interesting" that you managed to create a black and white seizure.

Another writeup, this time for The Evil Within, an example of how Yahtzee hates things that disappoint him. Horror, which I guess this was supposed to be, was it's genre, which gave him a nice bit to rage on. Yet, this is another time I find myself uninspired and the only one making noises in an echo chamber. This session coming after a break, in case you fuckers were getting complacent with "predictable, reliable update schedules". Well, to be honest, I was spending most of the reviews looking for things I want to write about. The last few have had a lot of positivity unusual to Yahtzee, something that strained my sarcastic streak to the limit. I was getting ready to resign to writing about positivity (shortly before I burn my bitter bastard card and then myself), before this review, and I realized I had the perfect topic! BEING A TREMENDOUS ASSHOLE

You saw right, you hypothetical twat I'm inexplicably angry at! Being an asshole is what this is all about! Whenever people watch the Yellow Yabbering Yabbo, they don't go in expecting, "Oh, what level-headed commentary and well thought out opinions." they think "Oh good, let's watch an asshole beat some sod's excuse for a game to a pulp, then disrespect the corpse." Asshole and Yahtzee are just two words that belong together, like you and twat. It's the one thing I think simultaneously there isn't enough of, and can never be enough of.

"Ooh, but being rude in a review is haaaaaaard". Well, shit, twinkie, suck it up. I diagnose a critical lack of calling things too poor for wank paper. So what can you do to be an asshole?
Arm the bullshit detector
The simplest way to say it. Keep an eye out for idiocy in the writing. If there's plot holes big enough to steer Celestia's big fat ass through, you point it out. When you see an author pull some Deus Ex Go-Fuck-Yourself, you'd best believe it is your civic duty to make it clear how that shit cannot be allowed to fly.
Abandon Self
No, I don't mean to suggest you don't own up to your words or anything of the sort. I mean to leave whatever preferences to character and theme you have in the last page. It's all too easy to get into a habit of going easy on something because you personally like. I don't care for the practice. I don't care if a story contains your favorite little colorful ball of love and diabetes, obligation to story is top. If they don't make sense as a character, that's something open to be a prick about. If there's a pairing shoehorned hard enough to leave imprints, I don't give a damn if it's your one-true-Waifu-loo, you drop it with napalm.

So, in conclusion, remember to be a dick. It's one of Yahtzee's most defining features. But, despite the angry tone I made sure to input in here, don't forget you can't just write a long hate-rant. That turns out more like grumbling, and it makes it uninteresting. Don't linger, don't tangent, and write a review like an asshole.

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Disappointment is a huge thing for me. Even if a story is otherwise relatively decent, if it doesn't live up to the huge thing I thought it was going to deliver, oh boy do I go to town on it...